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Friday, September 2, 2011

We haven't had a focused Tot School post for most of the summer; hopefully the new school year will help get us back on track! Thanks to Pinterest, we've been enjoying a number of new activities, including Magic Milk Paint.

All you need is a little milk in a container, a toothpick, dish soap, and food coloring!

Drop food coloring into the milk. Get close to the milk so that it doesn't spread quite as much (like the yellow, not the blue). Dip your toothpick in dish soap and then poke it into the food coloring....the surface tension is broken and the colors spread....so cool.

I used too much milk the first time and it did not work really well, so Emma painted with the colored milk for a while before we tried a second time.

Here is how it is supposed to work - awesome!

A new skill we are working on is cutting with scissors! Emma really enjoys cutting, and has gotten much better about understand the concept, where her fingers go, etc. She usually cuts magazines or old coupons.

This is another fun art project that I found via Pinterest. With blue painter's tape, I made a letter E on a sheet of paper. Then I told Emma we were going to paint all around the blue E. Before she started on that, she traced the letter E....first time she has ever been able to trace a letter, and she received no prompting!

Emma can do all of her puzzles on her own right now, including the large floor puzzles. To give her a little more of a challenge, I dump several wooden puzzles together and she works them simultaneously. She is still very quick! Puzzles are one of her favorite activities.

We've had a great time playing outside more now that the weather has been a bit cooler. Emma loves things like chalk and bubbles, and she recently learned to peddle her tricycle all by herself! We've also been playing with outdoor balls...throwing, kicking, and making up our own silly games.

Tiny Tot School

Will is into everything since he is now walking (usually running) across the room! It has helped a lot this week to have focused activities for him to do also. We love tot school!

He seriously cannot get enough of them. We just keep switching up the "prop" toy that he plays along with the ping pong balls. Here we paired them with nesting cups.

And some outdoor play with the ping pong balls. He loved digging through the grass for them!

Emma couldn't resist helping.

What is it about ping pong balls? I don't know, but he loves them!

Will is starting to get more interested in books. His favorite (by far!) is this version of Hallmark Guess How Much I Love You, read by Pap Pap and Omi. It is so cute to see him sit and flip through the pages. He recognizes the book enough that he gets frustrated when the board book version does not read to him!

Will also discovered that our big "boat" box doubles as a tunnel. He even introduced Emma to this idea, and the two of them chase each other through to the other side of the couch.